| Body | By Stephanie Knight, CASLS Language Technology Specialist
The popularity of the Buck Institute’s Project Based Learning (PBL) is attributable to its potential to positively impact student learning. It is a rigorous approach to solving real-world problems and questions that, when done correctly, allows learners to become amateur practitioners of the subjects that they are studying. In the world language class, Project Based Learning is a step beyond Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) in that the authentic language tasks that learners engage in during PBL are sustained within a conceptual and practical framework designed to intentionally incorporate 21st century skills.
As is the case with any approach to backwards design, the content and conceptual knowledge that learners should gain are defined by educators (or collaboratively with students) before beginning a unit of study. Additionally, the skills (critical thinking, collaboration, etc.) needed to acquire that knowledge and to use it are identified. The treatment of this knowledge and skill set is intentionally considered as educators plan, carefully considering the eight essential project design elements that are at play in PBL. These elements and their explanations (listed below) are adapted from “Gold Standard PBL: Essential Project Design Elements”, a blog post written for and by members of the Buck Institute. Additionally, I have included an example of PBL in practice from my Spanish IV Honors course to give an idea of what the essential elements look like in practice.
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Essential Element
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Explanation
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Element in Practice
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Challenging Problem or Question
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The problem or question lets learners understand the “why” of their learning. It provides the context needed for learners to recognize the meaning behind their learning.
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In our unit, we explored immigration to the United States and tried to come up with a solution to preserve the histories and traditions that are potentially lost in immigrant families when subsequent generations become more assimilated in the culture of the host country.
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Sustained Inquiry
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Learning should beget more in-depth and refined learning. Inquiry happens throughout the project and inspires research.
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We studied the history of Mexican immigration to the United States and the effects of policy changes on immigration flows. This led the students to consider current hardships faced by immigrants and sparked their curiosity regarding why individuals would willingly endure the hardships of moving to a new country in lieu of remaining in their home countries.
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Authenticity
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Authenticity in PBL is achieved through various means including context (real-world problems are solved), process (professional tools are used to create and research), impact (the local community is impacted), and establishing personal relevance (content speaks to the personal concerns and interests of learners).
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Our project was authentic in context (we looked to solve the aforementioned problem), process (learners learned histories by conducting interviews), and impact (learners created a mural to preserve the stories that they collected in for the school community). Though student reflections revealed the project to be personally relevant to most learners, making it so was not a part of our intentional design.
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Student Voice and Choice
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Learners have input and some degree of control in the project.
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In our project, learners were taught how to create leveled questions to elicit both simple and complex answers during interviews. They used that knowledge to create their own questions. They then synthesized the interviews to decide what themes were the most common and compelling. These themes were passed along to a group of art students (some of which were in our class) so that they could capture them within a mural.
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Reflection
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Like inquiry, reflection is a perpetual component of PBL. Learners must consistently reflect on “what they’re learning, how they’re learning, and why they’re learning” (Larmer and Mergendoller, 2015).
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Reflection occurred in multiple ways; we had classroom debates regarding how policy changes impacted immigration, engaged in group evaluation of work, and used exit tickets as our most common reflection tools.
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Critique & Revision
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In order for learners to produce high-quality work, they must learn how to reflect on that work. This process involves teacher input and peer review and feedback.
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In our class, learners engaged in group review of the interview questions that they created. They also critiqued their paragraph overviews of the work that inspired the murals.
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Public Project
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Learners are motivated to produce work of high quality when they know that their audience is not limited to their classmates. Additionally, displaying student work publically allows the work that the students create to become part of the public dialog. A happy side effect of this characteristic is that it puts high-quality student work in the public eye, dispelling any narrative regarding the poor state of education within the community.
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For our project, learners created a mural that was going to be unveiled at a ceremony at a local university in which we discussed the various immigrant stories that we collected. However, due to some logistical issues that arose, our school became the location in which we displayed the mural. It was placed in a high-traffic area (the main office), thereby making it accessible to more members of the outside community than another location in the school would allow for.
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In closing, it is pertinent to remind educators that though PBL can seem overwhelming given all of the factors that one has to consider, it is a worthwhile endeavor. As we experienced with our original plan to unveil our mural, issues can certainly arise that cause a well-intentioned plan to change. Regardless, if educators commit to implementing their projects with as much fidelity as possible, the learners will certainly benefit and grow, not only as students, but as individuals.
Reference
Larmer, J. & Mergendoller, J. (2015). Gold Standard PBL: Essential Project Design Elements. Retrieved from: http://bie.org/blog/gold_standard_pbl_essential_project_design_elements.
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